Him's
by Manic Penguin
Summary: They both had their past him’s that had left them broken. But the past is gone, and the future is what is at stake. WoaT with Sara Sidle from CSI: Las Vegas. Casefile with eventual romantic entanglments. SamMartin, SaraDanny
1. Chapter 1

**Title**: Him's 

**Rating**: R, though rating won't kick in until later chapters.

**Spoilers**: Without A Trace: early season one, nothing specific. CSI: 215 Burden Of Proof

**Timeline**: pretend that Martin joined the team on WoAT a few months before BoP on CSI.

**Summary**: They both had their past _him's_ that had left them broken. But the past is gone, and the future is what is at stake.

**Note**: I am a chronic insomniac and am intimately aware of how much worse insomnia gets when there's something pressing on your mind, which, in turn, only makes matters worse in the light of day, and the cycle continues until you reach meltdown or get whatever is bothering you off your chest. And that is what this story started out as, though it has since radiated out into someone completely different and completely unexpected.

**Warning**: I do not like Sara/Grissom, and Sam/Jack makes me queasy. These views will probably show in my writing. If you like either one of these relationships, turn back now.

* * *

Insomnia had plagued Samantha since she was a child. As far back as she could remember, her nights were filled with tossing and turning, as if she were guilty of something that was eating away at her soul and would not let her rest. Even now, years later, she still felt that oppressive presence in her chest, near but not quite at her heart, that gnawed away at her until the early hours of the morning when she would either collapse from exhaustion or get up early and start her day before ever really ending the previous one.

Sometimes she felt that it was right for the guilt to chow down on her when any sane person would be sleeping. Especially during her affair with Jack, Samantha had felt that not sleeping was a small price to pay for what she was doing, for the sins she was committing.

After things with Jack ended she had gotten better, only succumbing to insomnia when a case got to her or when she had been stuck on stakeouts and had pulled all-nighters that had messed with her sleep cycles that her doctor told her were all-important and should be strictly adhered to. Whenever the doctor said that Samantha had to fight the urge to laugh because she didn't know a single person who got the recommended daily number of hours of sleep, especially not in the FBI. There just weren't enough hours in the day for a job and all that sleep. And forget about a social life.

Things had been good lately, though. Samantha had seemed to hit a particularly good sleep cycle and she usually got five hours a night, which was about the average that a field agent in the FBI gets. She had even started getting back out into the dating world again, the wounded woman inside having taken evasive action after Jack decided to go back to his wife to make things right, retreating into a shell that made her life into night after night of rented movies, single glasses of wine, and skilled avoidance of any and all social events that could lead to her getting her heart broken again.

In the past few weeks the insomnia had returned, but the strange thing was that nothing was different. Work was going well—they hadn't ended up handing a case over to the homicide division in almost a month and less and less of their cases were going cold—and she had even started to make forays into an attempted social life, though the last guy she had dated had dumped her because she'd been called out in the middle of more enjoyable activities by her ex-lover—Jack had never been her boyfriend or anything as simple as that, he had been her lover, and, now, he was her greatest mistake—because of work. That was fine with Samantha, though, because she couldn't be with someone who didn't understand that her work was important to her, and to so many other people, and that she had to be ready to go without any notice no matter what time it was or what she was doing. He'd been a man she'd met at the gym, co-owner of a publishing house in the heart of Manhattan, but he couldn't understand her job or the fact that she worked for her ex, and Samantha had been relieved when she checked her messages one day after work and heard him telling her answering machine that it just wasn't working for him.

Samantha had talked to Danny about her insomnia, knowing he was stricken by the same insidious fiend from time to time, and he had suggested that she talk to someone, a professional, because he knew she wasn't religious and he had turned to his priest when things got bottled up inside of him. But Samantha had issues with shrinks, especially the FBI psychiatrist that she had been forced to see after a case, about two months into her assignment with Missing Persons, that had led her to find the body of a child that they had been searching for. So professional help was out, and Danny couldn't offer much himself, though not for a lack of trying, which left Samantha tossing and turning for the better part of the night, grabbing onto hours, sometimes only minutes of sleep whenever she could, and hoped it was just a phase that would pass.

Rolling onto to her side, Samantha chanced a look at the clock beside her bed. Six-oh-eight AM. Her alarm was set to go off at six thirty.

"Screw this," Samantha said, throwing back the covers and flipping the alarm to OFF before heading to the shower. She would stop at Starbucks on the way to work, order the triple shot of espresso that sent her heart into overdrive and would leave her ready to crash around midday which was fine because Martin had a habit of bringing treats for the team from a café that a friend of his owned and, if he would tell her where it was, Samantha was sure she could live on their food and coffee alone.

A shower and a head-start on her caffeine frenzy later, Samantha made sure that her briefcase was packed with the files she had taken home the night before to wrap up, and then she headed out the door, eager to get to the world that she understood and had control in, because it seemed that she had lost that power when she was in her home.

* * *

Leaving San Francisco was an easy decision to make. _He_ needed her, _he_ called her personally, and then _he _asked her to stay when her investigation was wrapped up and her findings, sound as they were, were ignored. She didn't have any attachments to the city, no emotional links or real friends that she felt sorry for leaving behind.

Plus, she was doing it for _him_. That made any sacrifice worth it.

Vegas was good for Sara in a lot of ways. She made friends with Nick and Warrick, had some laughs with Bobby Dawson, enjoyed the attention of Greg from DNA and the geeky coroner, David. She and Catherine never saw eye to eye, though she was pretty sure that was because she was the outsider brought in to investigate someone on Catherine's team—her family. The fact that Warrick never held her job against her didn't seem to matter to the red-head, nor did the fact that she never wanted to get anyone in trouble, that she was just doing her job the best way she knew how. But not getting along with Catherine was fine. They didn't work cases together too often and when they did they worked well together because they were both too professional to let personal differences get in the way of putting a criminal behind bars.

The only thing that sucked about Vegas was, ironically enough, _him_. The reason she came to the desert when she had always been more of a windy-beaches kind of girl.

It turns out fantasy really is better than reality.

He may have respected her work—though he never actually said so—but he didn't respect _her_. Which, at first, Sara thought she could live with, but when he started leaving experiments involving beef-bullets and god-knows-what-else next to her eggplant parmesan when he had shared over three hundred meals with her since she stopped being able to even look at meat, she knew that, like many people, she had idealized someone, elevated him to an almost God-like level in her mind, and, being the flawed—extremely flawed—human being that he is, there was no way for him to live up to her impossible standards.

So she took a leave of absence.

In response _he_ sent her a potted plant with a card that said 'from Grissom' in handwriting that was clearly too female for him to have even bothered to go to a flower shop and pick the damn thing out himself.

It was an effort, Sara gave him that, but it was too little, and much too late, so she packed a bag and caught the first flight to the capitol because she had a friend who had been trying to woo her into the FBI since she was still a Level One. A week later she was in Virginia taking in courses at Quantico. A month after that she got her orders and was placing a call to Las Vegas asking Warrick and Nick if they would mind packing up the rest of her apartment and shipping her things to New York, care of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Sara wasn't going back to Las Vegas, maybe not ever again, and, the longer she sat in her hotel room in New York with that week's copy of the Rental Papers open on the bedspread in front of me, the less sad she was about the prospect of never seeing _him_ again.

New challenges, new adventures, and, hopefully, a better life lay before her.

Now if she could just find an apartment.

* * *

Another day, another picture on the white-board, a school picture of a little girl, all pigtails and missing front teeth, beaming at the camera like she's just been told she's getting a pony and a trip to Disneyland and the new Barbie doll she's been eyeing in Toys-R-Us since she first saw the ad for it on TV. The girl had beautiful red hair that fell in ringlets outside the multicoloured-fabric scrunchies holding her pigtails in place high atop her head, and freckles much brighter than Samantha's own ever were splashed across the girl's cheeks.

Jack and Vivian were going over the mother's statement; Danny was speaking to the father on the phone. Samantha didn't know where the last member of the team, the new guy, Martin, had been with them for a while now and had long ago become an official member of the tight-nit group, had wandered off to, but she was sure that whatever he was doing was work related because he was so damned eager to prove his worth, not only to his team, his family, and the FBI at large, but also to himself, that he wouldn't be caught lollygagging when there was a eight year old girl who dropped her mother's hand on the subway on the way to school and had wound up with her face on the white-board in the Missing Person's Unit of the New York office of the FBI.

And Samantha was sitting at her desk, waiting for something to turn up that would give them a place to start, her eyes unable to leave the wide-eyed joy of the little girl whose school picture was taped to the white-board. It was easier when they were adults, Samantha had decided long ago. Adults can defend themselves, at least to a degree, and they have more ties to the world than children do so they are easier to track. Plus, when it's kids, everyone finds hidden emotions coming to the surface that they somehow manage to tramp down when it's a forty-something dissatisfied housewife that has gone missing.

Already Samantha knew that this was going to be one of the cases that hit her the hardest. She could already see herself curling up in a ball under the covers of her bed, sobs wracking her body as she relieved each and every moment of Sylvia Theresa Hunter's case. No matter how happy the ending, Sam knew that this little girl was going to be one of the ones that she would dream about years later, even after working hundreds, thousands, of other cases.

Her eyes drifted over to Jack, her once-lover, and, she realized, for maybe the first time ever that, no matter how pure her love for _him_ may have been once-upon-a-time, she would never be anything more to him than an indiscretion. When men cheat on their wives it's always the 'other woman' who fills the role of the villain. But it was _Jack_ who seduced Samantha, it was _Jack_ who would ask her to join him for dinners that they never had, it was _Jack_ who had left the comfort and warmth of his home and his wife and two beautiful daughters to spend stolen evenings in dirty motel rooms with a junior agent under his command. Samantha had been a young woman who fell in love with a strong, older, seemingly perfect man, and, when things ended between them, she had been the one to be hurt because her feelings for Jack were real while, to him, she was just a warm body to keep him sane between work and going home to his family.

She may have loved _him_ at one time—she's almost sure that what she felt for him was love, though she had never experienced it before and had certainly never been witness to such a powerful emotion growing up in a home where anger and indifference were much more prevalent—but now she only cares about him as a friend, a co-worker, and as a part of her past that has helped shape the woman she has become.

Even though somewhere inside her there was a tiny bubble of naïve hope that kept chanting 'it will work out', Samantha is okay with the knowledge that she is meant to be with someone else—or maybe no one else—but that, no matter what her destiny is with regards to other men, she is not meant to be with Jack Malone. And that, as it turned out, was something Samantha could live with.

Now, if she could just find a lead on the little girl whose eyes are boring holes in Samantha's already tender heart.

* * *

What did you think? I've been toying around with this storyline for a while and finally decided to let someone slightly less biased than myself read it. Please be brutally honest.

More soon.

Mel


	2. Chapter 2

**Title**: Him's

**Rating**: R, though rating won't kick in until later chapters.

**Spoilers**: Without A Trace: early season one, nothing specific. CSI: 215 Burden Of Proof

**Timeline**: pretend that Martin joined the team on WoAT a few months before BoP on CSI.

**Summary**: They both had their past _him's_ that had left them broken. But the past is gone, and the future is what is at stake.

**Thank you ****TheNaggingCube****for your note about my typos. I'm not entirelysure how those Los's escaped my notice in my final check.**

* * *

New York was a surprise. True, location doesn't count for as much for the forensics part of things, but everyone knows that New York is just one step down from DC, which is where everyone in the FBI, from janitorial to CSI's to field agents and everyone in between wants to be. Sara had figured that she'd be assigned to some field office in Nowhere, USA, but it turned out that someone thought she was ready to skip the minors and go right to the pros. Which pleased Sara because, already, she had some semblance of respect for her worth within her field, and because her worth was being acknowledged by those with power. Not that she was desperate for promotion or wanted limelight the way people like Conrad Ecklie did, but Sara did like it when her hard work was acknowledged beyond an offhand and automatic 'good job on closing the case', which, in Vegas, she was lucky if she got half the time from _him_. 

Her first assignment was something she had always hated working. Missing Persons. They didn't get many of those in Las Vegas, and the ones they did ended badly over ninety percent of the time. Sara had never even worked one before Vegas.

Sara wasn't good with hope. Never had been. And that was what missing persons cases were about. Hope that they would find the subject, alive and well. Hope that your evidence wouldn't end up with someone writing a letter of condolence to a mother or wife or husband. Hope that children would be back on the playground and friends would be back to regular weekly meetings at a favourite restaurant or bar. And, if all else failed, hope that the family would find closure because so many people never would have that small luxury and it was a horrible fact of both her trade and of life but the only thing that Sara knew she could do to change that was work every case the way she was taught.

With one other CSI, her probationary officer, Sara processed the scene. She did most of the work on her own, her PO seeming to prefer watching, observing, rather than gathering evidence, which she figured was a sign that he trusted her enough to let her basically solo on her first case with the FBI, so it didn't bother her in the least.

There wasn't much to process, to be honest. After taking some In-Situ pictures of the subway car there wasn't really anything she could do. Something like eighty-nine percent of New Yorkers take the Subway during morning rush hour, which meant that processing trace and fingerprints was an exercise in futility that would just piss off the techs back at the lab, something she tended to avoid because it's so much easier to get results from people who like you.

"Not the best first case out," her PO said as Sara sighed heavily, giving up on getting a lead from the subway car. They had only been given a few brief minutes to process the car because any longer would hold up all of New York, but both of them knew that even the few minutes they had were pointless.

Her partner was a stocky man in his mid to late forties with more hair coming out of his ears than covering his head. His name was Pete Tortino. He smoked heavily and was chomping away at a piece of gum while they were at the scene. They hadn't talked much on the way to the scene, such as it was, but Sara already knew that they would get along. He mentioned that he had read one of her papers a while back and thought that her ideas needed more cases to back them, and she returned with a comment on a paper that he had co-authored several years earlier that was similarly received by the few readers of that particular forensic journal, one that she had been a subscriber of for many years though she knew that most of the forensic community at large didn't feel most of it's contents were worth the paper it was printed on.

"There's no such thing as a good case," Sara said sadly as she closed up her case and exited the subway car. Six months ago she never would have said that, but somewhere between Vegas and New York she had stopped seeing every case as an exciting adventure and started seeing the human emotions behind the cases again. She hadn't focused on emotions in a long time, but somehow she had lost her ability to focus solely on the evidence and not on the people that the case involved. "What now?" she asked.

"I gotta be in court in an hour, so you'll havta break the news to Malone and Co."

Sara frowned and put her sunglasses on as they reached the street. "Who?"

"They're Missing Persons here. Best in the Bureau. Back at the office, eleventh floor. Jack Malone is the SAC," Pete said. SAC, or Special Agent In Charge, basically boiled down to team leader when it came to day-to-day operations. SAC only really meant anything when you got involved in task forces and multi-section cases. "You did good, kid. Jack'll understand. He prefers to work off phone records and pounding the pavement anyway. Forensics goes right over his head," he added gently. "You good to get back on your own? I gotta hit the dry cleaners before my appearance."

"I'm good," Sara nodded. She offered to take his case back to the lab and then she haled a cab and gave the driver directions back to the office.

The lab was in the basement of the building, a place not initially meant for forensics, but it was serviceable and there was a good flow to the many sections of the lab. Back in Vegas it seemed that everything revolved around the DNA lab, something that seemed to please Greg Sanders to no end, but the Federal Building had a long hallway with mini-labs on either side for whatever specific task needed to be accomplished. This hallway was closed off behind several security checkpoints and not even the Deputy Director in charge of the entire New York office was able to come to the lab without an escort and proper clearance. Security had been something of an issue back in Vegas, Sara had often thought, but it would be nearly impossible for anyone to tamper with the evidence in her new home.

After putting her case in her locker and tucking Pete's away safely as well, Sara found a bank of elevators and hit the button to take her to the eleventh floor. The doors closed and Sara leaned against the back wall, thankful for the brief moment of solitude. Her feet were killing her and Sara briefly entertained the thought of calling Catherine to find out how she worked day in, day out, in heels. One thing Sara already hated about the FBI was the damned dress code. Fortunately once she got past the security in the lab she was free to change into a pair of worn-out running shoes, something that a lot of people seemed to do, especially in the lay-out room.

Pulling herself together just before the doors opened on the eleventh floor, Sara mentally crossed her fingers, steeling herself for whatever came at her next.

* * *

Jack poked his head out of his office. "Who's working forensics on this?" he asked, nodding to the picture of Sylvia Hunter. 

"Tortino and some newbie," Danny replied as he moved over to a map of the city with pins all over it. He had pulled shit duty this time, being stuck fielding calls from any and all concerned citizens who felt they might have seen the little girl after 8:18 that morning. "Katie Horseshoe or something like that."

"Yeah, something like that," was the dry reply. Danny turned and saw a petite brunette wearing dark pants and a jade blouse and looking none-too-pleased at that moment. "Sara Sidle. I'm looking for Jack Malone," she said. Danny pointed to Jack and sheepishly went back to his desk. "Agent Malone," Sara said, nodding her head in greeting.

"Where's Pete?" Jack asked.

"Court appearance. But if he were here he'd tell you the same thing as I am. There was no trace, fingerprints are an exercise in futility, and, without a less high-traffic crime scene, I'm afraid I can't give you any leads," Sara said.

Jack nodded. He's pretty much assumed that would be the case, but it was good to have it confirmed. "Alright. One of my agents is collecting the mother's clothing. Maybe there's something there."

"You're thinking that the mother is the guilty party?" Sara asked, not really shocked by the thought.

"Until we have something better we have to run down everything," Jack replied. He crossed his arms across his chest. "How new to this are you?"

Sara rolled her eyes. "You want a resume?"

"Indulge me."

"This is my first week officially working for the FBI, but I've worked some Joint Task Force cases before, mostly in Las Vegas. I was with the Vegas lab for two years, and before that I was in San Francisco for five years. I am by no stretch of the imagination, a 'newbie'," Sara said. "If you want more thorough credentials have Human Resources fax you a copy of my file." She handed him a slip of paper and then turned on her heel and headed back to the elevator. "Page me when your agent gets the mother's clothes," she called over her shoulder before stepping back onto the elevator car and disappearing from view.

Jack stared for a moment before looking down at the paper in his hand. It was a make-shift card with _SARA SIDLE, CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATOR, LEVEL TWO, 5553019_ written out in neat cursive.

"Watch your mouth, Danny, or you'll be getting real cozy with that board," Jack warned the younger agent before disappearing back into his office. Danny hung his head before going back to the phones.

Danny fielded too many more calls to count—amber alerts always seemed to bring about more calls to the hotlines—in the next hour, and was immensely relieved when Samantha and Martin appeared. Standing up and stretching his sore muscles, Danny looked at the pair questioningly. "Anything from the mother?" he asked.

"No. Took her clothes, had a DNA tech take a swab—though he has nothing to compare it to---asked a few questions, but we don't have anything other than Jack's gut saying that the mom's involved," Samantha said.

"The CSI was just up here. Left Jack a number. Wants to be paged when she can pick up the clothes," Danny said. He cast a forlorn look at the phones on his desk. "Can one of you field calls while I get some coffee, please?" he begged.

Samantha and Martin shared a look. They couldn't decide who would take pity on Danny—they had both been in his position before and knew that coffee was the only thing that would get you though the day—so Sam pulled out a quarter. "Call it," she said to Martin.

"Heads," Martin said as Samantha flipped the coin. She caught it and glanced at it before pouting. Martin smiled as Samantha headed over and took Danny's seat. "I'll talk to Jack," Martin said as the two men went off in separate directions.

Danny was heading back to his desk with a fresh cup of coffee—stronger than usual and without the diluting powers of cream and sweetener—when he ran into someone. "God—sorry," Danny said, praying that he hadn't spilt his coffee all over the person he'd run into. He looked at her, trying to asses the damage, and blushed slightly. "Sorry," he said again.

"About now or about before?" Sara replied.

"Both?" Danny tried. He wasn't sure what it was, but there was something about Sara Sidle that intrigued him.

Sara looked at him for a moment, her gaze intense, but then she nodded and flashed him a brief smile. "You're forgiven. For both. But only 'cause you look like you've been run over by every cab in a forty-block radius." Danny smiled, relaxing slightly. He hated not making a good first impression. "Okay, so your boss paged me. Where's my evidence?" she asked, eager to get to work.

"Uh… not my task at the moment," Danny said. He looked over his shoulder and spotted Martin who was helping Sam out with the map. "Hey, Martin, the CSI's here," he called. Martin nodded and, after sticking in a final pin, he grabbed a brown paper evidence bag off the conference table and headed over to Danny.

"Hey, man, you'd better get back to the phones. Sam's going crazy," Martin said. His head was down, his eyes fixed on the writing on the bag that designated it as evidence. "I'm not sure what you're gonna get off this, but here you… Sara?"

"Martin? Oh my god, what are you doing here?" Sara asked with a wide grin on her face. Danny felt a pang of jealousy, but quickly quashed it down. He had no reason to be jealous that Martin knew Sara and had been the one to make her smile like that.

"I've been here for a few months," Martin replied, a dimpled smile gracing his features.

Danny cleared his throat. "You two know each other?"

Martin chuckled. "We went to Harvard together. We were close," he said, leering at Sara playfully.

"Pfft. Hardly. The only reason you remember me at all is that I carried your sorry butt through your science courses," Sara shot back.

"That's not the only reason," Martin said with a grin. "You look good, Sidle. I like your hair short."

Sara's fingers went self-consciously to her brown tresses. "Yeah, I, uh, found it easier to manage for work. Less of my DNA to worry about in the field," she said.

"Hey, Danny, I'm done covering for you," Samantha announced as she headed over to the group. "Hi," she said to Sara.

"Oh, uh, Samantha Spade, this is Sara Sidle, the new CSI," Martin said.

"She and Fitzy go way back," Danny added with a smirk.

Martin rolled his eyes then looked at Sam. "Sara and I were in the same class at Harvard."

"That's nice," Samantha said. Sara shivered slightly at the coolness the agent was projecting. "Viv's got a family emergency. Jack wants us to go to the school, find out what we can there," the blonde said to Martin.

"Okay. Sara, great seeing you. We should get together later. Catch up," Martin said as he handed her the bag of evidence.

"Definitely," Sara smiled, taking the card Martin had pulled from his pocket after giving her the clothes. "Agent Taylor, Agent Spade," she said, nodding to them before heading back for the elevators yet again.

"I'll meet you downstairs," Martin said before ducking back to his desk.

Danny looked at Samantha critically. "What was that about?" he asked her softly.

"What was what about?" she asked.

"You acting like a lioness to Sara's hapless zebra," Danny said. He looked at his friend for a moment before heading back to his desk, leaving Samantha to think about his question.

* * *

Comments, anyone?


	3. Chapter 3

**Title**: Him's

**Rating**: R, though rating won't kick in until later chapters.

**Spoilers**: Without A Trace: early season one, nothing specific. CSI: 215 Burden Of Proof

**Timeline**: pretend that Martin joined the team on WoAT a few months before BoP on CSI.

**Summary**: They both had their past _him's_ that had left them broken. But the past is gone, and the future is what is at stake.

_**Note: The Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine is a very real place, and has been pivitol in the furthering of forensics. the website is (triple**__** W dot vifsm dot org). I highly recomend checking it out, especially the glossary, if you're thinking about writing a case-based story or want to understand some of the things that happen at crime scenes and afterwords.**_

* * *

It felt good to see Martin again. Despite how she had played it off earlier, they had been incredibly close back at Harvard and losing touch with him was one of the great regrets that plagued Sara even now, years later. 

He was one of the people who she had told bits and pieces of her life to—in fact, he knew more about her than anyone else in the world—but even Martin didn't know the whole story. He had leaned on her academically while she had leaned on him emotionally, and, from time to time, they reversed rolls, though Martin was always stronger emotionally and Sara had academics pretty much under control. For a time she had thought that she might have loved him as more than a friend and confidante, but she had never acted on the feelings she had for him, and, as time and distance got in the way, her beyond-friendship feelings for Martin Fitzgerald faded away.

Which was good, Sara decided, especially since she was getting some major _BACK OFF BITCH_ vibes from his partner, Samantha.

Sara made a mental note to make her intentions very clear to the blonde agent as soon as she got the chance.

The lab was cool, hinting at the chill outside the walls of the building, and Sara smiled, the knowledge that she would probably see the first flakes of the season soon making her happier than she had been in a while. It had been a long time since she had had a white Christmas, though she hadn't really celebrated the holiday since she was a pre-teen and still had both her parents, such as they were. Martin had dragged her to his family celebration every year while they were in school, and, though they were over-the-top deals that didn't exactly scream 'Happy Holidays' to her—too many politicians and the like sucking up to each other for it to even be called a family celebration—it had been nice to have a place to go over the holidays. After Harvard she had gone to Berkley and Martin had invited her again, but she hadn't been able to get away from school and, in a way, she was glad she didn't because it was during that brief school break that she had first met _him_. Gil Grissom, doctor of entomology with a focus on ciminalistics and decomposition.

Sometimes Sara wondered what her life would have ended up like if she hadn't declined Martin's invitation. She probably never would have enrolled in Grissom's course because, honestly, bugs creeped her out. She never would have gone out for coffee with him after his final lecture. She never would have been in his rolodex and he wouldn't have called her to Vegas when Warrick was screwing up and Holly Gribbs was dying, then dead. She probably would have stayed in San Francisco, though maybe she and Martin would have finally gotten their act together and she would have moved to the East Coast to work at one of the labs in Virginia, maybe even tried to get a place at the renowned Virginia Institute of Forensic Science and Medicine while Martin worked his butt off at Quantico and prayed that no one would notice that he had the same last name and the same sparkling blue eyes as a certain newly appointed Deputy Director in the Hoover Building. They probably wouldn't have lasted, though, and that thought pained her, though it was a very realistic assumption considering all the what-ifs that were floating around in her mind. They wouldn't have lasted because Martin would be moved from Virginia after graduation and she wouldn't want to leave behind her career to follow him around, hoping and praying for a job of her own in proximity to him. She might have lasted one, maybe two transfers, depending on where Martin ended up, but eventually she would find a lab that would feel like home and wouldn't want to pack up and leave again. They might do the long distance thing, but Sara was barely able to keep a relationship together when she saw the guy everyday, so she doubted that long-distance would have led to anything other than broken hearts and hurt feelings, and, probably, the end of their friendship. And, no matter how many times she wondered what would have happened if she had agreed to go to that party with him, she always ended up with them hating each other. It was much better to keep their friendship. And Sara knew that the friendship was still alive, very much so, because of how easy it had been to fall into their old patterns earlier in the day.

Sara didn't know where Martin went after Quantico. He said he'd only been with Missing Persons for a few months, and he would have graduated from the Academy over eight years ago. She figured that he probably spent the missing years doing scut work at different field stations, slowly moving up because he would never trade on his family name to get ahead in life, until he caught a break and made it to New York.

"Hey, Sidle," Pete said from the doorway to the layout room, bringing Sara's thoughts back to the present reality instead of what might have been. "Wha'cha got there?" he asked, not coming any closer to the table where she had methodically spread out everything the mother had on her that morning.

"Mother's clothes. They don't have any other angle to work at the moment so they're focusing on her," Sara said as she used a pair of oversized tweezers to pick up a hair from the mother's blazer. It was red, curly, with no skin tag but it was easy to assume that it was the daughter's. She'd get it under the scope and compare its texture and visual identification to the little girl's brush once she got permission from the mother to check the apartment. "How'd it go?" she asked, referring to his court appearance."

"Jury's deliberating but we got the drone with DNA, fingerprints, and eyewitnesses. Didn't see the point in sticking around," Pete said. He observed her for another minute. "Look, you've got the protocol down and the skills mastered. You don't need me hovering, and there are four other cases I got pulled off of for two hours of overtime pay to be your Probationary. I signed off on you, sent the paperwork up on my way down here. You need anything, page me, but I think you've got this one handled."

"It's not like I'm overrun with evidence," Sara said dryly, looking at the meagre pieces of, in all likelihood, useless evidence that lay before her. A skirt, a blazer, a silk shell that held nothing more than a powdered deodorant stain under the arms, a pair of polished pumps, a pair of pantyhose, and a purse full of normal purse things—wallet, cell phone, mints, a day planner, a pen, a keychain with seven average sized keys and a silver teddy bear medallion hanging from it, two tampons, and a permission slip saying that Elisa Hunter, mother to Sylvia Hunter, gave permission for Sylvia to go to the Museum of Natural History on December 16th with her class between the hours of ten am and two pm. Sara had never been there, and decided that, after finding an apartment, that was job one for her once she got a day off. Maybe she'd send some thank you gifts to Warrick and Nick for packing her apartment up. Maybe even find something to send for Lindsey Willows' upcoming birthday. Maybe the entire lab would get belated Christmas presents from Sara. She mentally shook her head. She was still feeling guilty for leaving without saying goodbye to anyone. It wasn't the time to think about gifts, or Las Vegas, or anything other than the evidence in front of her.

She said a distracted goodbye to Pete whose pager was making annoying noises at his hip, and then turned her focus to the items on the table.

* * *

Driving in New York, like driving in any metropolitan area, was problematic at best. Samantha knew that she wasn't making the trip any more enjoyable by refusing to talk to Martin beyond one-syllable responses to his attempts at starting a conversation, but she hadn't slept the night before and she was experiencing feelings that she couldn't describe and didn't like one bit. 

"Did I do something to piss you off?" Martin asked, finally giving up with small talk and getting right to the question that he had been wanting to ask since they got in the car.

"No," Samantha said, though she knew that it was not true. He had done something to piss her off, and that was the problem. He wasn't supposed to have that kind of power over her. No one was.

"Then why are you treating me like everyone did my first day with the team?" Martin questioned.

Samantha sighed softly and decided to go for a half truth because she could at least understand that half of what was going on with her lately. "I haven't been sleeping well for the past few weeks and I think it's catching up with me," she said apologetically. "I don't mean to take it out on you," she added, though somewhere inside her she knew that was a lie, too, because she wanted to punish him for making her feel the indescribable and unwanted feelings in the first place.

Martin had the good grace to keep his eyes directed straight ahead, even though they hadn't moved in several minutes and wouldn't be moving anytime soon so taking his eyes off the road was a perfectly safe and sane thing to do. "Anything you need to talk about?" he asked gently, already pretty sure he knew the answer.

"Not particularly," Samantha said. The unspoken 'especially not with you' hung between them in the enclosed space of the heated sedan.

It was silent for a minute and, when the traffic didn't start Martin spoke again, changing the subject to something safe. "Do you really think the mother has something to do with the little girl's disappearance?"

"I really don't want to believe it, but we have nothing else to go on. The father lives out of state and his alibi is iron-clad—he's a lawyer in Florida and he was delivering an opening argument at the time of the disappearance. Both parents have money, plus there's some family money in their accounts, yet we haven't heard word one about a ransom. No one remembers the little girl being in that car this morning, and until we get the video from Transit Authority we have no proof that Sylvia was really there," Samantha said.

"What possible motive could Mrs. Hunter have, though?"

"Maybe she has mental problems. Maybe she's a drunk or an addict and we're just not reading the signs. Maybe she wants the little girl's trust fund money. Maybe she's sick of being a single mother," Samantha said, the infinite number of reasons that parents harmed or even killed their children exhausting her more than her sleepless night had. "But, on the other side of things, there are a lot of sickos out there who would want the kid, not the cash."

"If that's the alternative I hope it's the mother," Martin said gravely, and, though Samantha knew that wishing that meant that they wished the little girl was probably dead, she agreed with him because at least then Sylvia would be at peace instead of terrified and in the clutches of some pedophile or some other mentally and emotionally disturbed individual wishing for death to take her away from the mean person keeping her away from her mommy and her friends and her school and her future that was still too far off to determine but too close to ignore.

"Damn it, I hate it when it's kids," she said softly. She didn't need to hear Martin's reply to know that he was agreeing with her. No one liked investigating cases with kids involved.

* * *

_Does anyone know what kind of public transportation system Vegas has? Please let me know if you can help me on this. The last time I was in Vegas was about eleven years ago, give or take a few months, and my family was basically just driving through on our way to visit... some distant relative... so my memory is kinda hazy. Any help you could give me would be greatly appreciated._

_Mel_


	4. Chapter 4

**Title**: Him's

**Rating**: R, though rating won't kick in until later chapters.

**Spoilers**: Without A Trace: early season one, nothing specific. CSI: 215 Burden Of Proof

**Timeline**: pretend that Martin joined the team on WoAT a few months before BoP on CSI.

**Summary**: They both had their past _him's_ that had left them broken. But the past is gone, and the future is what is at stake.

**_Thank you _**Lyssanick **_for helping me out about Vegas' transportation situation._**

* * *

After getting through the traffic jam that had held them up for over an hour, Martin easily found the school and eased the FBI fleet sedan into a parking space outside the green plastic-coated chain-link fence that went high enough into the sky to keep stray balls within the grounds and to discourage anyone from trying to climb over, either trying to get in or to get out. It was after lunch, a meal that both agents had skipped in favour of spending those precious few minutes getting to the school a little faster in hopes of a lead in what was turning into a dead-end case that would weigh heavy on the minds and hearts of the Missing Persons Unit until the next horrific case came along to take the place of Sylvia Hunter's unexplainable vanishing act. Then Sylvia would just be another thing that the agents would think about in their darker moments when all their failures came back to haunt them in the dark of night. 

"Teacher's name is Anytia—A-N-Y-T-I-A—Feller. She's been with the school for eleven years as of last September, and the only complaint in her file is from eight years ago," Martin said, reading off his notepad as they headed for the front gate.

"Complaint? About what?" Samantha asked, intrigued. She could see potential in Miss Anytia Feller, a glimmer of hope in the otherwise grey landscape of the case.

"Nothing that helps us," Martin said sadly. "Apparently she brought in cupcakes for an end of year party and one of the kids went into anaphylactic shock 'cause he was allergic to eggs. The boy was okay, but his parents made a big deal about the teacher not knowing that one of her students had a life threatening allergy. It wasn't school policy to make those kinds of details available to the teachers, for privacy reasons, so Feller couldn't be blamed for the incident. The school put a letter in her file and from then on make it policy for all teachers to have access to their student's medical information."

"We know anything else about Feller?" Samantha asked.

Martin ran his fingers through his hair. "Single, no children. Lives in an apartment in Brooklyn with a chocolate lab named Rufus—registered with Animal Control. Been with the school for eleven years, before that she taught at some grammar school out West. Graduated in the top ten in her class in early-to-mid-childhood education at Georgetown. Grew up all over the place—Army brat. No debt as far as Viv could tell."

"So probably not a suspect," Samantha decided with a nod. "How many students are in her class? How many girls?"

"Uh… twenty-three students, total. Fifteen females. Why does that matter?"

"When you were eight did you hang out with the girls in your class?" Samantha asked.

Martin considered that. "Good point," he replied when he remembered when he was Sylvia's age. Girls were 'icky' and the only females he would be caught dead around were in his family and his father's assistant, Mary-Ellen, who had been to more of his little league games than both of his parents combined.

Samantha flashed him a smile before pulling open the heavy front gate and slipping through, pushing it just hard enough for Martin to make it through behind her before it clanged shut again. They made their way to the principal's office, knowing that anything they did would have to be done through him anyway, and, after flashing their badges to the woman with a weak perm who was tapping away at a keyboard with blindingly pink fingernails, they were buzzed in to see the principal, Ken Wentworth.

"What can I do for the FBI today?" Wentworth asked as if it were an everyday occurrence for federal agents to come into his office with SIG Sauer's holstered at their hips.

"We need to speak to Miss Feller and her students," Samantha said.

"About what?"

"Sylvia Hunter," Martin said.

Wentworth frowned, the name obviously not meaning anything to him. Samantha and Martin filed that away.

"Someone from our office called earlier today. You faxed us copies of Feller's file, along with Sylvia's school record," Samantha supplied.

"Your signature was on the authorization," Martin prompted, perfectly in tune with how Samantha wanted to play this. Samantha smiled inwardly. Despite her original misgivings about him—mostly because of his father and her assumption that Martin had used his family name to get from White Collar to Missing Persons the way he had—Martin was a good agent and she enjoyed working with him.

At least, when he wasn't making her crazy with feelings she couldn't name and wanted to exorcise from her soul and cling to with all her strength at the very same time.

"I sign a lot of things every day," Wentworth said. "I don't read everything through. Pearl tells me what everything is and I sign on the line," he added, nodding toward the outer office where his assistant was back at the keyboard, tapping away with her blinding nails that Samantha was positive were fake.

Samantha fought the urge to roll her eyes. Habits like that were what allowed things—and people—to slip through the cracks. There was a reason that, as much as she hated it, she worked her ass off doing paperwork, just like she worked her ass off in the field. "Regardless of your management style, we still need to speak to Anytia Fuller and the students in her class. We can get a court order if necessary, but I really don't want to make it public record that Brucksteen Academy doesn't cooperate with the Bureau when one of its students has disappeared without a trace," Samantha said. As she spoke Martin pulled out his cell phone and started dialling, though Samantha wasn't sure if he was dialling to get the court order she threatened or if he was just trying to make Wentworth believe that he was. Either way, it was an effective manoeuvre, because Wentworth began to sweat at the thought of the bad publicity that the school could get if he didn't start making things easier for them.

"You cannot speak to the students without a representative with them," Wentworth said, stalling.

"We're not trying to pin anything on a bunch of eight and nine year olds, sir, we're just trying to find Sylvia Hunter," Samantha said as calmly as she could.

She almost hoped Martin hit SEND and get them their court order.

* * *

Instead of reflecting on how much time she had spent in the elevator going between the lab and the eleventh floor, Sara wondered how involved she would be allowed to get in the case. Everywhere she had worked before she had been able to go with the police, be there when they questioned people, but she wasn't sure what the FBI's policy was regarding CSI's in the field. But, regardless of whether they wanted her with them, Sara had questions that she needed answered before she could complete her interpretation of the evidence she had been given to work with. 

Sylvia Hunter had been missing for almost eight hours, and they didn't have any leads. It was almost two in the afternoon, and with the days being as short as they were, Sara knew that it would be dark by five. After dark finding the little girl would become even more difficult.

Assuming she was somewhere that she could be found.

The elevator opened and Sara stepped out onto the eleventh floor. She made a quick note of the white board where a timeline was written out in several different samples of handwriting.

_0600 – calls father in Florida. Call lasts 20 mins_ was written in a gentle cursive.

_0740 – enters subway w/ mother _was written in thick block letters, all capitals, by a decidedly male hand.

_0743 – enters subway car w/ mother_ was next in the same writing as the previous notation.

_0801 – drops mother's hand, is separated in crowded car _was written next, in the same writing as the previous two times.

After that the timeline petered off. There were a few identifications listed, probably from Danny's hotline tips, Sara thought, but obviously they were not doing very well. Sara knew it was easier to find adults because adults have ATM cards, credit cards, cell phones, enemies, and numerous other records that help blaze a trail to those who want to be found, as well as those who don't but aren't smart enough to hide completely. But children didn't have any of those things, and the motive behind a kidnapping—if that was what it truly was—was either revenge against the parent or was something more perverse and sexual.

Sara couldn't see Jack in his office, but she did find Danny and an older African American woman standing by the board with the tips from the hotline showing with tiny pushpins with flags flying off the end of them.

"Any word from Sam and Martin?" Danny asked the woman.

"Not since they got out of that traffic jam," the woman replied.

"Damn," Danny said. "How's Reggie? You weren't gone for that long."

"Reggie's fine. Sprained his wrist. He's at home with the TV and some Advil," she replied before looking over at Sara. "Can I help you?"

"Uh, Viv, this is Sara Sidle. Forensics," Danny said. "This is Vivian Johnson," he said to Sara who nodded and extended her hand to the other woman. "You get anything off the mother's things?"

Sara sighed. "Nothing definitive. I've got some questions to ask her, though, if she's still around here somewhere."

"Danny'll take you to her. I'll handle the phone lines," Vivian said with a gentle smile.

"I owe you big," Danny said to Viv as he headed off with Sara.

"I intend on collecting," Vivian called after the Latino agent who chuckled heartily as he put a gentle leading hand on the small of Sara's back.

Normally Sara would have gotten angry, not being the type who appreciated being led by a man, but she got the feeling that it was just a gentlemanly instinct and not a chauvinistic action that had led to Danny pressing his hand to the sensitive nerves at the small of her back.

His warm hand burned her through the thin satin blouse she wore and Sara suppressed a shiver, unwilling to allow herself to feeling anything at all. Danny was just an extremely sexy man who she had happened to meet at a time when she was feeling vulnerable and, to be perfectly honest, horny as hell. It made sense that his touch would bring about feelings that she felt were best left far, far away from the workplace.

"You've dealt with missing persons cases before, right?" Danny asked as they headed through the hallways toward the conference room where Mrs Hunter was situated.

"More than once," Sara nodded. She was getting annoyed with the fact that everyone was questioning her ability to do the job. "It's not something I enjoy. Give me a murder investigation over a missing person any day. I don't know how you do this every day."

"Sometimes I don't either," Danny admitted before pushing open the door to the conference room. "Mrs Hunter, I'm Special Agent Danny Taylor, this is CSI Sara Sidle. We have a few questions that'll help put some evidence into context."

Elisa sniffed pitifully. "Will it help bring Sylvia back?" she asked.

"It might," Danny said as Sara sat down across from Elisa.

"Ask away, then."

Sara opened the file she had been clutching tightly since leaving the lab and pulled out a stack of pictures. "Unfortunately there wasn't anything on the subway that could help us find your daughter, which is why your belongings were taken earlier. I went over them and I've got some questions that I hope you can help me with." She selected a picture off the top of the pile. It showed Elisa's keys. "Can you tell me what each of these keys unlocks?"

"My apartment's main door, my apartment's door, my office, those two are for my car, this one is for my parent's house in Connecticut, and this one is for my ex-husband's house in Florida," Elisa said, pointing at the picture as she spoke.

Sara nodded and made a note of that. "And what about this? In your day planner you have a note to _call lawyer_. What about?"

"My, uh, divorce isn't final yet. Freddie and I… we still have been putting it off, but we decided that it was worse for Sylvia, thinking that we might get back together…" Elisa said. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. "I made a note to myself to call my lawyer to have him draw up the papers to make it official." She looked up at Danny. "Has someone called Freddie?"

"Yes, I spoke to him earlier," Danny said. "He is catching a flight up here in a few hours."

"Good."

Shuffling through the photos, trying to find the one that fit with her next question.

* * *

They had been given an empty classroom to conduct their interviews in. Martin, who was decidedly better with children than Samantha, folded himself into a tiny chair meant for children under the age of six and waited for the first student from Miss Feller's class to come to him. Samantha had opted to conduct her interview of Miss Fuller in the coat room in hopes of cutting down the distraction level and keep the children out of earshot of the more sensitive questions that, though she hated to verbalize them, she knew she would have to ask to get a full picture of the situation. 

Anytia Fuller was short, barely five-foot-two in the hard-soled heels that she wore, and she had hair the colour of red autumn leaves that fell in loose waves past her shoulders. Her clothing was stylish and all black, and she wore a string of brightly coloured beads that wound around her neck several times at varying lengths. Her eyes were hazel and her face was devoid of make-up as far as Samantha could tell.

"I'm Special Agent Samantha Spade with the FBI's Missing Persons Unit," Samantha said, extending her hand to the nervous woman. Anytia shook Sam's hand tentatively before taking a seat in one of the two adult-sized chairs that Samantha had dragged into the coat room from the teacher's desk.

"Do you have any idea where Sylvia might be?" Anytia asked.

"That's why we're here. The rest of the unit is pursuing other avenues, but it is standard procedure to talk to the school when a child goes missing."

"I know. Children spend more time with their teachers and classmates than they do with their parents' everyday, and parents aren't always privy to everything in their child's life," Anytia nodded. Samantha looked at her questioningly. "Unfortunately this isn't the first time a student in my class has gone missing. That's why I left the West Coast, to be perfectly honest."

"That's not in your file," Samantha said, though she hadn't gotten he chance to look at it herself. However, she trusted that, if there was something like that in Anytia Fuller's file, Martin would have felt it was important enough to share with her.

Anytia rubbed her hand over her face tiredly. It was clear that this was taking a toll on her. "There's nothing in my file because I had nothing to do with Damien's disappearance. His father was a prosecutor and Damien was an easy target… according to the FBI. They found his body two weeks after he didn't show up for after-school-care. I… I couldn't stay there anymore…" she trailed off, shaking her head. "I just felt so guilty… it was my day to walk the day-care kids to the community centre but my friend was flying in so I traded off with another teacher so I could pick my friend up at the airport. The other teacher forgot… and Damien died," Anytia said, tears springing to her eyes as she recounted what was obviously a painful memory for her. She looked at Samantha pleadingly. "Please don't let that happen to Sylvia."

"We're doing everything we can to prevent that," Samantha said. She never outright promised that she would find the person she was sent to look for. It hurt too much if she had to break that promise later. "Now… what can you tell me about Sylvia Hunter?"

* * *

_Comments anyone?_


	5. Chapter 5

**Title**: Him's

**Rating**: R, though rating won't kick in until later chapters.

**Spoilers**: Without A Trace: early season one, nothing specific. CSI: 215 Burden Of Proof

**Timeline**: pretend that Martin joined the team on WoAT a few months before BoP on CSI.

**Summary**: They both had their past _him's_ that had left them broken. But the past is gone, and the future is what is at stake.

* * *

Danny tucked his cell phone into the inside breast pocket of his suit jacket as he propped his feet up on an empty chair at the conference table in the bullpen. "That was Martin," he said to Sara as if she hadn't heart his half of the conversation already. "He and Sam are on their way back from the school."

"Good," Sara said distractedly. She kept running over Elisa Hunter's responses to her questions, trying to figure out what about them seemed so _off_.

Noticing her pensive expression, Danny frowned. He'd known Sara for only a few hours, and yet her already felt like he'd known her for years, despite the fact that he knew pretty much nothing about her. There was just a connection that he couldn't explain and, to be perfectly honest, he didn't really want to because he felt that some things were best left as a mystery.

However, the cause of her distress was not one of those things. "You okay?" Danny asked, concerned.

"Just trying to put this all into context," Sara said, gesturing to the table in front of them that was covered in the photos she had taken of what little evidence they had. "Any word on that tape from Transit?"

"You ever try getting something from the Manhattan Transit Authority without a ten month wait?" Danny questioned.

Sara obviously didn't see the point in reminding him that she was new to the city so, of course she hadn't tried to deal with the MTA yet. Danny knew that Vegas was somewhat lacking in mass transit, especially compared to New York, because of the way that everything was laid out and how most of the action was within walking distance of tourists hotels—which was what the city was made for, essentially—anyway, but he figured that it was just as hard to get something from the MTA as it was to get something from a casino's private security. "No, but I'm beginning to see that that hope is futile," Sara admitted. She rubbed her eyes and exhaled a cleansing breath. "This sucks."

"Yeah, it does," Danny agreed. In his opinion there was nothing rose than what they were dealing with at that very moment. But he refused to say that aloud lest he somehow defeat Sara's spirit more than it already had been. Even in the few hours that he had known her he could tell that she was breaking, if not already broken, and Danny found himself wanting to pull Sara into his arms and shelter her from the world that was hurting her so badly.

They sat in silence for several minutes before her pager went off. She frowned as she unclipped the piece of plastic from her waistband. "Can I borrow your phone?" she asked, nodding over to Danny's desk.

"Go ahead. Hit 9 for an outside call," Danny said.

"Thanks," Sara said as she rose from her chair.

Danny grinned when he noticed that she had shed her shoes when she sat down and hadn't bothered to put them back on as she crossed the cool linoleum to his desk. She perched herself on the edge of his workstation and hit 9, then several digits in rapid succession. Obviously a number she called often, Danny surmised. He knew he shouldn't have been so curious, but something about Sara Sidle intrigued him and he wanted to learn everything he could about her.

"Hey, Nick. You beeped? Shouldn't you be tucked into bed by now?" Sara said, her voice light and playful. Danny hadn't heard her use that tone yet, not even with Martin. A smile spread across her lips as she listened to the other person, Nick, speaking. "Nicky, you are a god! How the hell did you manage to pull something like this off?" she asked, excitedly. There was another pause, then she let out a little squeal of excitement. "Words can't describe how much I'm loving you right now. You're two-for-two on damsel-in-distress rescue duty today. This is amazing," she said, beaming. There was another pause and her smile faded slightly, but not too much. "No, it's no big deal. Get back to work, Stokes. And try to make sure that all of my underwear ends up in the boxes, please," she said before uttering a quick goodbye and a promise that they would talk again soon.

When she returned to the table she had a smile on her face that lit up the room. Once again Danny found himself feeling despondent because he wasn't the one bringing a gap-toothed smile to her face. "Boyfriend?" Danny asked hoping he didn't sound jealous. He had known her for a mere ten hours and already he was jealous of other men in her life. And Danny wasn't a man prone to jealousy.

"Who? Nick? Hardly. He and I worked together in Vegas," Sara said, still smiling. "He was just calling to let me know that his sister is getting married and is willing to sublet her apartment to me and, since she's already in the process of moving in with her fiancé, I can start moving in at the end of the week. So I get to get out of that horrible hotel room," she said, crinkling up her nose at the thought of her current residence.

"Where are you staying?" Danny asked.

"Four Seasons," Sara said, "but after processing as many hotel rooms as I have… it's kinda hard to forget all the things that people leave behind." She shuddered dramatically causing Danny to smile softly. "Anyway, other than Nick saving me from eternally searching the rental papers for a decent place that I can afford, he also was nice enough to get in touch with his brother who happens to be a big-wig in the New York Transit Authority, and the tapes from this morning are on their way over as we speak," Sara added with a satisfied smile on her face.

"That's great!" Danny smiled. The first real break to come in the case. It would prove—or disprove—the mother's story, once and for all. Finally he could see a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

* * *

Samantha was surprised when she got the call from Danny, but she refused to let Martin know that she had underestimated his friend, let alone that she was surprised by anything anymore. Jaded as she was, there were still a lot of things that shocked, scared, and sickened Samantha Spade.

But she didn't want the world to know that.

"Looks like we're buying the new girl a steak," Samantha said as she met up with Martin at the car. She had finished with Anytia earlier and had started talking to the kids in the class to help Martin out. After they spoke to everyone and gave out all the cards they carried with them, Martin went to talk to the principal again while Samantha went out to the car to warm it up.

"Why?" Martin asked as he sank into the passenger seat reluctantly. Samantha bit back a smile at that. She knew he hated her driving.

"Apparently she's got a friend somewhere who's related to someone at NYTA and they've called in a favour and managed to put a rush on the tapes. They should be there when we get back to the office," Samantha said. She hated that she sounded bitter but something about Sara Sidle rubbed her the wrong way. She knew it had something to do with Martin and the strange and new feelings she had for him, but she really didn't want to admit that she was jealous. She'd rather just be a bitch and apologize later if she had to.

"You ever going to treat Sara like she deserves to be treated?" Martin asked, surprising himself as much as Samantha.

Samantha frowned. She wasn't used to Martin calling her on the carpet for her actions. He usually let her get away with her mood swings and issues and hung back if he felt she was nearing her boiling point. "What do you mean? I've hardly said two words to her."

"But you act like her being here is some huge burden on you," Martin said. "Is it because her first case with the Bureau is with Missing Persons? That she skipped all the scut work that we had to go through to get here?"

"I doubt you ever did scut work, Martin," Sam said.

"What's it going to take to convince you that I didn't get to where I am today by trading in on my father's name?" Martin asked.

"I am convinced. I admit at first I was sceptical—you were with white collar and then suddenly you're with us—but you've proven that you got to where you are today by working hard, maybe even hard than most because you want to prove yourself and make sure no one thinks you're trading on your father's name," Samantha said. And that was true. She still didn't think he did scut work, though. Playing driver to more experienced agents in obscure field stations around the continent, working cases that were borderline Federal jurisdiction, working alongside the agents that the FBI wanted to phase out by sticking them with rookies until they quit out of frustration. Samantha had put in her time, worked her ass off, and managed to get to a place where she was happy most of the time. She doubted that anyone would make a Fitzgerald do things like that, even if Martin wasn't the type to complain. They would all be too scared that it might, somehow, get back to Mr. Fitzgerald. "We all know that you aren't like that, Martin," she said, referring to the team. "And I'm sorry that we rushed to judgement when you first joined us."

Martin didn't say anything. Samantha knew why, too. His career wasn't the point of his anger with her. The fact that he was upset with her had nothing to do with him at all. And, while she had decided to play the bitch in general, Samantha couldn't take Martin being mad at her, no matter what. So she jumped to the apology portion of her plan ahead of time.

"And I don't dislike Sara. I'm sure she's put in her time and is good at her job. But I don't know her and I don't trust her."

Once again she left the 'especially with you' unspoken; only this time Martin didn't hear it reverberating in his head and heart.

* * *

The tapes had arrived just as Jack returned from his expedition to the Hunter's apartment—a trip that Danny knew Sara had been insulted that she had been left out of. Jack came back with a stack of children's artwork in his hands. Pencil sketches, felt drawings, and paintings, all showing a natural skill that indicated that Sylvia Hunter was a budding artist.

Danny remembered being told once that young children are so guileless that their true feelings come through in their artwork; much like a teenaged girl would keep her innermost secrets in a diary. Art is universal, he muses, remembering his own 'artistic endeavours' as a child that usually ended up leaving the paper and heading for the walls or the floor or, a few times, the neighbours annoying cat, Congo, who liked to slip into their apartment through the broken kitchen window and scratch up the furniture and send his foster-mom into allergic fits of sneezing that only served to aggravate her already angry back. There are no language barriers in art. No rules, either, which makes it a perfect outlet for tortured souls who can't find the words, no matter what language, to articulate their pain to the world.

Never a big fan of art, Danny learned at a young age that he appreciated the psychology behind the picture much more than the picture itself. He remembers going on field trips to one of the many art galleries in New York and, while his classmates oohed and ahhed at the bright colours or soothing lines, Danny found himself wondering if the dirt road in the background leading out of the frame was the artist making sure there was an escape route, even in the field of wildflowers that made up the majority of the painting. None of his friends understood this about him. Danny wasn't even sure he had understood it back then, either. But now, doing what he does every day, Danny is thankful that he spent his formative years wondering about the truth behind the pretty finished product, because that is what life is. The truth behind the pretty lies.

"Damn, this kid was not happy," Danny said, able to tell that much from just a quick glance at the morbid artwork.

"Which doesn't track with the tale the mom's telling," Jack said as he put the pictures down on the table.

Danny watched as Sara looked at the child's art carefully. The look of recognition on her face worried him, but, before he could ask her about it, she answered his question on her own. "These are all part of the same story. Like a pictorial timeline," Sara said. She started arranging the artwork in a line. Danny stood and moved to stand behind her, leaning over Sara's shoulder as she made the pattern become clear. He never would have caught that, especially not as quickly as Sara had. "Sylvia Hunter has seen a lot of pain… witnessed things that she couldn't talk about because she didn't understand what she had seen, what she had heard…"

"What she had experienced," Jack finished sadly.

"Shit," Danny hissed when he realized what Sara and Jack had caught right away.

The case had just reached a new level of evil.

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_**I'm not getting a lot of reviews for this. Is that because no one is reading it, or are people just not responding?**_


	6. Chapter 6

**Title**: Him's

**Rating**: R, though rating won't kick in until later chapters.

**Spoilers**: Without A Trace: early season one, nothing specific. CSI: 215 Burden Of Proof

**Timeline**: pretend that Martin joined the team on WoAT a few months before BoP on CSI.

**Summary**: They both had their past _him's_ that had left them broken. But the past is gone, and the future is what is at stake.

_**Note**: The past few months have been really hard on my family, my grandfather being in the hospital and essentially dead but not quite there yet, but things should be getting back to normal (whatever that feels like) in the near future. Hopefully._

_I'm a big fan of closure, which is probably why my grandfather's death didn't even seem real until after the 'celebration of life' ceremony we had on Saturday. So, in keeping with the theme of closure in my life, I'm going to be winding down some of my stories that have been languishing in fanfiction limbo for ages now. While this story is just beginning, other stories will be wrapping up soon... at least, that's the plan. But you know what they say about the greatest plans of mice and men..._

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Resisting the urge to kiss the oily cement when he stepped out of the car, Martin vowed, once again, to never give Samantha the keys to the car, no matter how much she used his obvious feelings for her against him. No matter how much she pouted and whimpered about the cold, he would not let the keys out of his sight.

"Think the tapes are here already?" Samantha asked as she grabbed her black butter-soft leather shoulder-bag style briefcase from the back seat.

"Probably," Martin said as they headed for the elevator. "You still think that this is more than a simple kidnapping?"

"Unless a ransom demand has come in, yes," Samantha said. "And Jack wouldn't forget to tell us something like that." She checked the pager she kept clipped to her hip and sighed sadly. Martin knew that that was where she kept a count of how long their missing person had been missing. He did the same on his cell phone, but he tried not to look at it too often. It was like watching the counters by the freeway that showed how many people had died of smoking while you were stuck in traffic. Depressing to the nth degree. "We're going on ten hours missing."

Martin's shoulders sagged. Even though he knew that they might have finally gotten somewhere it still felt like they hadn't done a thing to find Sylvia. "More if your theory that this isn't a kidnapping is correct," Martin agreed.

"It's not _my_ theory, Martin. It's _a_ theory that we're investigating while pursuing the original kidnapping angle," Samantha said. "Just because I happen to be leaning towards one theory other the other doesn't make it _my theory_."

"But the fact that you're the one who first proposed it _does_," Martin said, effectively halting Samantha's line of argument.

The elevator finally arrived and they headed up to their floor. Danny, Jack, Samantha, and Vivian were gathered around the conference table, concentrating on something that they had spread out over the surface of the large table. "You guys get anything good at the school?" Jack asked without looking up from the tabletop.

"A lot of insight into the minds of eight year olds than I could probably do without, but there was one thing that jumped out," Samantha said as she took a seat at the table. She took note of the artwork that was spread over the table. "And this would be a good example of what I'm talking about. The teacher, Anytia Fuller, was worried about Sylvia's home life. Scenes like these were the focus of most of Sylvia's art projects. Fuller said she had written a suggestion that Sylvia see the school's psychiatrist but it hadn't gone home yet. Apparently it was in the report card."

"Which don't go home until next Thursday," Jack said. Samantha raised an eyebrow at his comment. "Report cards on Thursday, parent-teacher conferences on Friday. Marie is going to be in Boston so I'm in charge of whatever punishment Kate and Hanna might need to receive."

"They're gonna _love_ you," Danny said, rolling his eyes.

"At least if I punish them I'll have to be home to enforce it," Jack said with a shrug before turning his attention back to the artwork.

Vivian looked at Samantha. "Did the teacher have any idea what the drawings could mean?"

Samantha sighed softly, sounding defeated. "Just that they worried her. One time usually just means that the kid had a nightmare or saw something on TV. But Sylvia was constant in her genre of… art."

"Dark, painful, angst-filled excerpts from her mind that are more fitting for depressed teenagers than eight year olds," Jack nodded.

"My teenage years were pretty shitty but I never felt this bad," Samantha muttered as she traced her fingernail over the horrific scene she had in front of her.

Jack shrugged. "Sylvia is incapable of dealing with whatever is happening to her. I just can't tell whether it's because she's too young to comprehend what is happening or because it's just too common in her life for her to know anything else," he said. He sighed. He hated it when it was kids. "Maybe it's both. Regardless, she doesn't know how to ask for help because she doesn't know how to explain why she feels she needs help. Obviously painting, drawing… art in general… is her way of telling people what she is going through without having to find the words."

"But she's just a kid," Danny said, thinking about his nephew, "so this could all be nothing but a disturbed imagination. Maybe something happened, but, because she's eight everything is the end of the world."

"I thought that gene didn't kick in until puberty," Vivian said. It was clear she was thinking about Reggie who was on the cusp of the hell that is the teen years.

"Childhood is getting shorter and shorter," Martin replied as he took off his suit jacket and started rolling up his sleeves.

Jack let out a low growl at that thought. He remembered the day he had been late picking up Kate and Hanna and their principal had told him that whenever he was late they started wondering if he had been shot. "Those are some of the scariest words a parent can hear," he confessed.

Martin made a mental note to find a few days to visit with his nieces before the world made them anything but the innocent little angels that they were. The thought of anything happening to those little girls was like a stab in the heart with a dull knife, and Martin couldn't even imagine what it would be like if they were his own little girls instead of his nieces.

"Has the mother seen these?" Samantha asked.

"No. She left before these arrived. Agent Li went with her to her apartment. Apparently _mom_ is on medication for stress and chose a bad day to leave the pills at home," Danny said. He threw the few sheaves of paper in his hands down onto the table and dragged his hands over his face. "I'm going to go check on those tapes. These aren't going to tell us anything without some kind of context and we're not gonna get that without more information," he said bitterly as he pushed his chair back and headed off to the realm of the FBI's resident tech-geeks who were currently working on the tapes that had recently come in from the Manhattan Transit Authority.

"I think I'll join him," Vivian said softly before slipping away after the Latino agent.

Jack sighed and pushed the artwork away. "Danny's right. All of this is out of context right now. For all we know the mom could be a monster movie fan and Sylvia's dreams are being influenced by the TV," he said.

"Maybe we should check the apartment. I know it's not SOP for kids this young, but Sylvia clearly had some issues," Samantha said. "Maybe there's a hint of what the source is there."

"Okay. Sam, I want you and Sara to check the apartment out. Martin, contact the Centre for Missing and Exploited Kids and see if any of their files track with what we've got here," Jack said. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his palms. "I have to go see Van Doren," he added grimly before the four people at the table stood up and went their separate ways.

* * *

It's short, I know, but the next chapter will be longer. That I can promise because it's already nearly complete.


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